adÈle by leila slimani

1843 magazine 31 january 2019

Leila Slimani’s “Lullaby” was the best selling book in France in 2016 before becoming an international success. Adèle came out in France before “Lullaby”, but this is its first outing in English, in a sharp and nuanced translation from Sam Taylor. It is a short, disturbing novel, written in the present tense and set in a bleak and amoral Paris.

Like Emma Bovary, Adèle is married to a doctor. She also echoes the nihilism of Flaubert’s heroine. Adèle is a successful journalist, but thoroughly bored by her rather proper, borderline-prudish husband Richard. She feels excluded – almost redundant – because of her husband’s fierce love for their child. She is also obsessed by transgressive sex – with her boss, her best friend’s boyfriend, and a pair of male prostitutes. She often asks her partners to brutalise her: she is addicted to breaking the rules.

Slimani’s spare, compulsive prose is once again very much on display here. But the author’s real skill lies in making Adèle’s behaviour taboo and her ennui understandable.

This review first appeared in the Economist’s 1843 magazine